Summer trip 2009

Sweden. Ancient beauty

Here is the description of the trip which I have spent this summer. Wow, it just lasts for 3 transient days but it brought me a plenty of sweet memories. Retelling it to you is something funny.

Disclaimers

- The entry comes with both texts and photos. And I apologize for the bad quality of some photos. I even didn't have time to take such good photos (hmm, yes I mean something photography, something artistic) because I went with my companies and people didn't wanna wait me for just standing behind taking pictures so long.
- Some of the photos look a little over-exposed, you can say so, but believe me it's the over-hot weather and too much sunny light that kill the photos. I did my best with my camera Canon 350D, it wasn't capable of solving the bad weather.
- There are so much things happend and amazed me during the trip but of course I couldn't tell all. I hope you will have a good illustration of what I'm gonna tell about. For more photos of the whole trip, I would like to invite you to my facebook's photo album: [link]


Preface

Okay, as you may know (or not), my mom came over here to visit me a couple of week ago, and we have just been back from the trip. We've been to Sweden, and it was really a cordial time! During the time my mom stayed here, I just took her around the two cities I was living in and it was not something special 'cos two that places are kinda boring and small with few places of interest for tourism. The most memorable time was when we took the trip to Sweden. I will tell about it later. First, I must say it's so good to reunite my mom after a long time.


Mom, on the main deck of the boat

Due to her retirement this year, she's now having plenty of time to do what she could not do from the past. She has devoted almost her life for working to guarantee her beloved children (my older sis and me) would get a good life, and it's fair for her now to chill out after all. To be honest, if it's possible I wish she could get out of the goddam job she had worked before as sooner as possible because she worked for the administrative office the whole life! And you know, the Vietnamese administrative offices are all shitty! Holyshit, employers all the time work as hard as they could while being underpaid, and it's just disgustful. I will never work for a national office no matter how it is! But thanks God she eventually retired. My mom and I don't seem to fit each other so well, and we have family conflicts so often but honestly she's the one I pay my most reverence. I just adore her and I love her even my manifestation always seems to be cold to her. I was so worried when she took the flight to Finland because I was afraid of the plane crash but she had a safe flight after all, thanks God! To see her here is more than wonderful, all I can say is that.

Let's start the trip.


Helsinki port


The portable city?

I spent the trip with my mom and my girlfriend, and other mom's friends.

We went to Sweden by boat and it was where we predominantly spent the time, yes on-boat. And holyshit the boat is just incredible! It's huge, as huge as you could imaginate. It's something like a portable city, of course if it's huge enough to carry a built-in airport so I can call it a real city, ha ha. But it's just huge. Its name is Silja Symphony and to be one of the biggest boats in Finland which has the main route is from Helsinki to Stockholm and vice versa. It's capable of carrying as much as 2800+ passengers and 500 cars, you believe it? 500 cars. OMG, I'm just... speechless.


Silja Symphony

The Smokestack

Inside the boat there have several restaurants, bars, solarium, sauna, cinema, gaming room and some other special services. Consisting of more than 13 decks, there are such nice places for the passengers to view the beautiful sea and enjoy the time in the top floor- where I spent most time vegging alfresco.


Inside the boat, the main lobby




Main deck

Services on the boat are all well-arranged and professional. Food is excellent, goods for sale are a not so expensive under tax-free prices but we didn't lavish that much on stuffs there excepts the purchase of drinks or some sweets or cakes. Buffet on the boat isn't really Finnish style as a company of mine said since it had many different styles of food offered for different people's tastes, they were all yummy and tasty and yes the quality was just scrumptious. Price? Not so extravagant, still be acceptable and affordable I think. And yes, since all the stuffs from a piece of salad to seafood or ice-cream for the dessert are worth eating and being praised, I have no complaint at all. Kudos, for the services!


My companies


Main deck

The bars of the boat were where people mostly gathered, of course. There are two discrete bars, one for classical people and one for the youth. I more fancied the first one because they played consonant music there, while the other one they played really annoying music. Cocktails there were exquisite, and the bartenders really knew how to make a good cocktail. I drank a so-called Summer Kiss with ingredient of soft wine, strawberry and other juice mixed. It was sweet, cold and cool and really something just for summer time! And wow, when I ordered that cocktail I saw a man having been given a Mojito, that made me think of my best friend 'cos he fancies Mojito the most! The hilarious thing was that ridiculous mexican-look alike guy saw me and said something like "Nihao"?!! Wtf, man, I was so surprised that I repeated as what he said, "Nihao", and he laughed out loud. "Hey shit, man, I am not Chinese". But he left and I guess he didn't even hear me when he looked kinda drunk. So funny ha ha.




Helsinki port. The church

In the main bar, a band played music all the night, and there had circus performance for the kids. Ha ha the performance was just funny, and it was years for me to re-see the clowns. Just enjoyable!

The room where passengers stayed was not so roomy but it's well-equiped, it's valid indeed. 4 flexible beds, one table, one toilet, a small cabinet and a beautiful view to the sea. How could you request more? I love that small room even more than my room at home, because the ambience it brought was really cosy and pleasant. It was more than a joy when you could watch the sea from the window, felt the tenderly slow move of the boat and the peace of the blue sky just in front of your eyes. It's something I call the enjoyment of loneliness ('cos sometimes I was at the room alone).


The lobby of the passenger's private rooms
(sorry for the under-exposed pic, it was quite dark there and my camera's flash light is limited in range)


The passenger room


Tax-free supermarket inside the boat

I and my lady once spent time on the spa service located in the nearly top-deck of the boat, which consisted of both sauna and solarium. It was good even the area for spa wasn't quite big, there only had 3 or 4 small pools for passengers to join, and they seemed to be quite narrow when a lot of people jumped into simultaneously. But in general, the spa was good, especially when you could enjoyed the spa above the ocean and watched it while dipping yourself into hot water!


Helsinki port

The cinema, in one deck higher than the spa area, was not really a cinema, there had no big screen at all but only the projector! The movie was watched by a projector thus I though the quality of the film displayed wouldn't be good enough, that I gave it up. Next to the cinema room was a gaming room for the kids, there were severals PlayStation3 engine there, and I really wanted to play some games but when I came inside the room, all the kids were there so that I gave it up, too, ha ha.

Sleeping in the boat was not so pleasant, not because of the shaking of the boat while moving, it didn't shake at all, but when I woke up everytime my body shook for a while. OMG, my body did shake and my fingers quaked. I had no idea why my body shook, maybe it was becaused of the effect of the boat's moving but it moved really smoothly. I still don't know why. Those phenomenons stopped after I walked for a while. So strange, but it didn't matter much.


Somewhere in the sea between Sweden and Finland

Deck of the boat

The eventide in the sea was something special I have fortunately experienced. In Finland summer time, the sun never sets before 1000 pm, so the crepuscular time is later than usual. The sun was bloody red, and it looked like a fireball hung afloat on the sky and sparkled its shadow over the sea. A majestic landscape ever! And hey, notice it, could you believe this photo was taken sometime around 1045 pm?


Crepuscular illumination over the boat.
The lady, wow, she's just charming...

Sweden- unexpected allure

This is the very first impression of mine towards Sweden:


Sweden

I was just wow, and I said to myself "look, the architecture here is nice". And the deeper I came into the center of the city, the more wow I was.



Sweden

OMG, I was shocked! I never though Sweden would be that magnificent! The architecture here, from just a tiny house to a huge building or palace, was just a work of art! They were ancient. They were antique. And they were just eye-catching. The city itself had a power of seducing the visitors from the first glance. I couldn't help myself stop watching around those beautiful roads, the pretty boulevards and the narrow alleys. "My God", told to myself, "I love this place. It glamourizes me already".


The narrow typical alley

Those narrow alleys like this reminded me of my hometown, Vietnam, very much. The Swedish roads were not very big, and in walking roads there had full of alleys in two sides, which were what I really was interested in. Inside the roads, hundreds of house in ancient-designed shapes were just beautiful which had detailed vignettes carved delicately onto the walls.



As a suggestion from my Finnish company, we all together visited the street market in the center of the city, which displayed hundreds of juice store offered to the customers. "The sellers almost are non-Swedish-citizen but the foreigners, it is different from Finland 'cos in Finnish street market, mostly the sellers are local ones", said my company.


The Swedish strawberry

My mom bought a bag full of cherry and they were very fresh, at least they alleviated me from the damn hot weather. Got out of the street market, we came straightaway to the big square, methinks, located somewhere in the center of the city, and now I faced the modernized side of the ancient city! There were a lot of modern buildings in cutting-edge architecture, mostly glassy houses. Now I must explain to you that in countries like Sweden or Finland, you will never see skyscrapers like in US or HongKong or else, just middle-sized buildings. Because of this, you will not be staggering seeing hundreds of tower houses, this characteristic makes Sweden look very harmonious in architecture among areas.


Big square


My mom and lady stood in the middle of the big square


Crossing by this long road (shopping center), we saw thousands of multicultural, multinational restaurants and shops

Yes, the photo above represents the view of a shopping center. You are shopping-aholic searching for with-it stuffs? Just come here then you can find almost everything! From Nike to DG, from Christian Dior to McDonald, from Thai buffet to Mexican, Italian cuisines... I felt like the world gathers here!


Modern building

I'm sure many of you have been aware of this statue:



I have seen it in the Internet but never think of it seriously, just be aware of it as something funny. But some local people told me the meaning of it as a symbol of peace. Well, when a gun is twisted over, it's no longer hurtful. Oh yeah, it's just fab, isn't it? And surprisingly this fab comes from Sweden.


The big square




Above photo is the underground of the square, where locates fast-food restaurants and small supermarkets. I even met a commemorate from a Michael Jackson fan, someone put flowers, candles, letters and pictures of M.J there. So sad to hear about him...

We chilled out for a while there, then continued into a magnificent area where had many many beautiful houses, churches and museums, even the King Palace.







Here is where I felt amazed. The huge stone gates leaded into the square where antique architecture's tremendousness could wring your heart and captivated you.



Standing in front of such giant monuments made me feel the human was so small. If it wasn't because of the overheated weather that prevented me from capturing the landscape, I would have taken as much photos I could. But you can see the photo and feel the sun, it was too hot!




The entrance







Look! Just a play of colors. I wished there were a blue house, then it was a perfect of color mix. :P



Almost photos I took, you could ask me how I did with those? Did I adjust the tone into blue like that? I must explain that I did nothing in enhancing the tone except making some under-exposed or over-exposed photos into acceptable conditions. The blue sky is natural! And isn't it beautiful?



I wonder who is this guy? What is he thinking?





And this lady...?

We decided to wait in front of the King Palace to see the Sentinel's changing. I didn't feel interested in it, but my mom and other companies did so I just followed them. We had to wait under hot weather in the middle of the day, and I was so tired! Surrounding us there had thousands of people waiting to see the thing like us, too. The show did very slow with complicated performance from the royal bands and sentinent's action. It's the national ceremonial of the Swedish and they do it everyday.

To my Vietnamese mates, ha ha it's just something the same to the sentry of Ho Chi Minh museum, they change the turn daily. :P








We ended up the walk and continued the trip by car to the tower of the city, which was as high as 30 floors. On the top floor, you can view the whole city, just fabulous! I love the restaurant there, very homely.





After that we returned to the boat and enjoyed all the rest of the time there, I came again to the bar at night, watched the show and slept late. The following day, we were en route to home.

In conclusion, this trip is my best one ever! Wow, living for a few days on-boar was something amazing and awesome. I had a very nice time with my beloved people, thanks to my Mom, if she didn't come to Finland I think I wouldn't have had a chance to travel like that, because I was still busy with many other things.

I think I will be back Sweden someday, it's so great! 1 day is a very short time to discover such a mysterious country. Hopefully that I will have opportunity to travel more in the future. :)

And hey, where did you spend your summer time this year?

Finland, 0344 pm, 020709